Dayla Martin disappeared three years and four months ago. That was all that was known about her case.
“Do you know which university you’re going to? You and I both know it would be career suicide if you studied criminology in the city,” his friend Drake said, laughing bitterly as he reviewed his university application—a favor. Lucas wasn’t very good at writing, so his friend was making sure the tragedy was well involved so that various university administrators would open their wallets. With a missing friend in the mix, what better way to start the melodrama?
“I was thinking about moving to California,” Lucas said, touching the hem of his T-shirt. He still didn’t know if it was right to write about her.
Dayla’s case was a mess. The police, useless as usual in a town without funding, dropped the investigation when no leads surfaced. Lucas found this stupid—how the hell did a girl get so good at disappearing that she could baffle an entire precinct? The only clue, stolen by Drake himself, the commissioner’s son (that should give an idea of the quality of our beloved officers), was the security footage from the store showing her entering an alleyway, a common shortcut for students, and never emerging from it.
People were questioned, friends and teachers, and no one knew anything. Not even he himself, the last to see her alive after a tutoring session, had anticipated that event.
“The farther the better. Very wise, you tried…” Drake’s voice trailed off as Lucas glanced at Sam, his ex-girlfriend, pulling on the locker.
They broke up right after Dayla disappeared. His pain had been too much for her, and Lucas, stupidly blind, hadn’t noticed that Sam had been bullying Dayla. How didn’t he notice? someone might think, well, hormones were very blinding when it came to a girl you found attractive. His ex confessed that she dated him to annoy her; how beautiful the teenage logic. What cruel torture that had been. Not only had he been a jerk to the girl the day before she disappeared, but he’d been hanging out with her bully right in his face. What a fucking friend he was. Sometimes, he felt like Dayla was choking him from wherever she was, trying to pull him down with her. Who else could be to blame for all her suffering? The idiot who didn’t deserve to be called her friend.
Lucas tried to find her; he did, but a teenager didn’t have the resources: Flyers and missing persons websites were useless against someone who vanished into thin air. Whether it was regret or shame, it didn’t matter anymore once that person was gone. Lucas was a fool, an idiot. No matter how much he cursed himself, he would never bring his friend back. Not even becoming a criminologist would change that; it was his selfish wish that nobody else suffer what he did. That, however, would not bring Dayla.
He just wanted to apologize for being a shitty friend. But nothing would bring her back, now he knew, no matter how much he prayed to a nonexistent god. He had already accepted that Dayla was dead. It was the first step towards healing.
Sam managed to open her locker, causing everything inside to fall forcefully to the ground, a muffled sound falling into a watery puddle. All the students screamed, becoming the creatures without common sense that they were, calling for teachers and dialling 911. His ex screamed in horror, pointing at the contents inside her locker, pulling at her hair as if that would help in any way, and Lucas, the stupid Lucas, could only stare at the ground in shock.
Because what fell out was not books or pens, but Dayla Martin bleeding on the floor, breathing and alive, but missing a leg.
—
The days that followed could only be summarised as chaos. The police and emergency services arrived at the school, taking away the teenager who had just made a miraculous resurrection. They didn’t let anyone leave the school until ungodly hours, demanding to know how no one noticed there was a living body in a locker, but answers never came. It was like three years ago, but this time it was an apparition. His ex got the worst of it; her parents had to call a lawyer. They tried to question Lucas, but his mind was so shocked that they left him alone.
How did someone feel when they got what they wanted most in such a traumatic way?
Nothing made sense; Everyone questioned how a girl who had disappeared reappeared in the locker of one of her bullies. It was a cruel joke of the universe, whether told by Dayla or someone else. There wasn’t even a trace of blood inside the locker, as if instead of having been there for hours, it had appeared at the exact moment Sam opened the door. The news went crazy with the scoop, suddenly interested again in the person they had forgotten, “Missing girl reappears in the middle of her school,” every column read. People were addicted to everything related to Dayla, searching for clues about her case. Nobody cared when she was gone, and now that she was back, it was as if everyone wanted a piece of her.
Lucas didn’t know whether to be relieved or angry at the hypocrisy of all these people. At this point, it no longer matters. He couldn’t complain to the universe about this miracle. However, the guilt grew like a raging river inside him. All his progress, all his acceptance, had been interrupted by this new impossibility. He could feel his self-loathing resurfacing inside him, pulling at his eardrums to make him see the mistake he had made. Dayla might have returned, but her leg was gone. She loved to run; his teammate on the track team—that’s where they met. Then she offered to tutor him in intermediate math, a miracle she put up with him. She was the best support he’d ever had during the loneliness of high school, when you were surrounded by people with the same problem.
She was fast, the best of the team. Dayla had won a prize that same week. What on earth had caught the best runner? It was one of the questions he asked himself every year.
Days later, Drake showed a body cam (stolen again) from one of the police officers, the original one who handled her case. It was a video of the worst attempted interrogation in police history.
“How are you feeling?” The policeman in the video entered a hospital room, decorated with flowers and balloons, wishing a recovery. Dayla hated all the cheesy things. She would have been happier if people visited her (which Lucas was incapable of doing). She looked healthy and emaciated at the same time, if that’s possible. The video didn’t show the wound, covered by a blanket, but if what people were saying was true, it had been cut below the knee. Whether it hurt her or not, the audiovisual did not show it. The teenager, now a young woman, was too serene for someone who had been kidnapped, her reddish hair looking too clean, but her eyes, her eyes looked too dark, as she had observed horrors and survived.
“What do you think?” Her voice was calm, just as Lucas remembered it. She scratched her nails nervously, an instinctive sign of hers. Her eyes look outward, where the audio barely picks up Dayla’s father yelling at some people to leave her alone. Her mother, sitting in a chair, looked at the police with disgust.
It seemed the resentment didn’t disappear with her daughter back.
“Look, if you want us to help you, you need to tell us what happened,” the man, breaking any form of victim’s correct interrogation learned at the academy, insisted. Lucas saw Dayla frown in the video, looking at the man as if he were a crying child. Drake laughed at it, but Lucas couldn’t.
“You are too late. Don’t you think,” the video finished with the police getting out of the room, muttering about annoying teenagers, blaming the victim for their own failures, how unique.
“Why haven’t you gone to see her?” Drake asked, turning off his phone. It had been so easy to steal that video, he’d said; his father leaves his computer open all the time.
“I can’t.” How would Dayla see him if he were standing in front of her? With cold eyes, as if she were looking at a stupid teenager, or with hatred, because that’s what he deserved.
“You can, but you don’t want to.” His friend stood up; he had only come to show him the video. “Some of us already went to see her. She looks pretty good considering all the shit she must have gone through.”
“She was just my tutor.” Liar, liar, Lucas hiding behind a blanket
“Don’t give me that crap, asshole. We all knew you guys were friends. You know you were friends. You were literally the only person who gave free tutoring.”
Lucas didn’t deserve to be a friend. How could he? It was all his fault. If there were a punishment for shitty friends, he’d get life imprisonment. They’d known each other since they were twelve, innocent kids scared of the imminent arrival of high school. They’d only been friends for a few years—three in a life of over fifty—and even then, he was a shitty friend for six whole months. How lovely teenage priorities were, soaring in the dreams of first love like candy. Dayla didn’t deserve to be his friend, but at least they could both acknowledge that she’d been an excellent tutor for him in middle school math. Without her, his grades plummeted, along with the innocence of an easy life that every teenager loses someday. They could have been friends before, but now, Lucas was just another annoying person in Dayla’s life.
“Dayla asked about you, you know. She wanted to know if you passed that math exam,” Drake said, in an attempt to encourage his friend to do the right thing. However, the words only caused Lucas to run to the nearest bathroom to vomit.
Days later, Lucas’s feet led him to the hospital. He could not say it was a coincidence, given that he had been thinking about coming for days, and a Google Maps route practically screamed “guilty.” The interior was depressing: sick people and nurses calling patients and visitors to come in and receive bad news. The hospital had that characteristic smell of death mixed with disinfectant, making Lucas want to leave as quickly as possible. Dayla must hate being trapped here.
“I came to see a patient, her name is Dayla Martin,” he said, after having to wait behind several people who were vomiting. There must be a new virus going around the city.
“Name,” the nurse scanned him up and down, as if expecting his uniform to disappear, revealing a journalist with a large camera.
“Lucas McClain.” The nurse typed on her keyboard, checking if he was on the visitor list. He knew he was; Drake and other friends got in and always came to bring her smuggled candy, planning the graduation. She would not be able to attend as a student, but some were planning to sneak her in as a guest. They wanted to help her return to a normal life. It was still a few months away, and she would be recovered by then.
“Room 517. Don’t get lost.” She gave him a sticker with the room number, and Lucas proceeded to get lost for 10 minutes until finding the correct door, hearing Dayla humming a song he had never heard before.
“Hey, nice song,” Lucas said, all the wisdom flying out of his body. She looked up from her GED study guide, staring at him for a few seconds before a wide smile lit up her eyes.
“I thought you’d never come to see me. Tell me you passed the teacher Bradford’s exam, you can’t leave me with a stain on my tutoring reputation.” He blushed, which drew a giggle from Dayla. She probably already knew he had failed. It’s difficult to pass something when the day before, you were interrogated by the police as if you were a possible culprit.
“Why are you being nice to me?” Lucas’s hands trembled. He did not understand. Where was the anger, the fury in her words as she yelled at him that he could have prevented it? He was just as guilty as the one who took her (the guilt that screamed at him all these years). Where was all that self-imposed hatred that he so desperately wanted to be justified?
“Why wouldn’t I be? We’re friends.”
“You were just my tutor, and before that, teammates.”
“If I were just your tutor, I would have charged you 20 dollars. Inflation is terrible.”
“I don’t understand.” Yell at me, Lucas wanted to say, insult me. Tell me I made the wrong decision.
“I figured that out years ago.” Dayla chuckled. She hadn’t changed at all.
“You don’t remember.”
“Remember what? The birth of Judas?”
“I was supposed to walk you to the station, but I stood you up.”
Maybe Dayla did not remember, but Lucas did. She had always hated walking through the city alone, fearing the darkness of the streets. He had never understood it. Why would he? He was a teenager, a man, and he had never feared being followed by someone or being harassed by a morning drunk. He did not understand; he only understood that his tutor (his friend) was a cowardly girl who was afraid of the dark. And Lucas, oh sweet, hormonal Lucas, wanted to go to a party with his girlfriend, now ex-girlfriend, to drink beer at fifteen and find a room where they could be alone. What an easy life Lucas had, only thinking about parties and fun. What entertaining innocence, pretending to go to the bathroom to sneak away and leave Dayla alone in the library. Lucas, who had to flee that same night in his underwear because the police had arrived at the party house. Lucas, who woke up the next morning with a hangover and spent an entire weekend without finding out until Monday that Dayla had disappeared. Lucas, who still took another week to realize that this wasn’t a game and that his friend had been taken because he was a horny teenager. Lucas, who was a horrible friend and the one to blame for everything.
“That’s it? You’re so dramatic. I knew the second you disappeared that you snuck out to go to a party… Whose party was now?” Dayla touched her chin, and Lucas could only look at her as if she were stupid for brushing off the problem.
“I shouldn’t have left you.”
“And I could have called my parents.”
“I should have been there with you. You were alone.”
“You didn’t know something was going to happen to me, and I doubt you could have prevented it,” Dayla said it with an overly calm air, as if being kidnapped was her destiny. There was a maturity in her words that only sent shivers down his spine. She sounded like an old woman who had witnessed wars, but was too tired to care.
“Maybe if I had been with you.”
“If you had been there, he would have taken you.” The words were a statement of fact, not speculation. She said it strangely, as if she wasn’t even referring to a human being, but to a monster from her imagination. She spoke as if her kidnapper were the devil himself in disguise. That, however, didn’t do much to relieve Lucas; it only made him feel worse.
“But it was my fault…”
“You’re a fool for thinking you’re to blame. You know what I thought the whole time I was in that place? I didn’t think, ‘Oh, Sir Lucas could have saved me.’ I’m not that much of a damsel in distress. I thought, ‘It’s a good thing that idiot Lucas didn’t come with me.’ Everyone acts like I should be crying all the time. Please don’t be one of them.”
“I’m sorry,” Lucas winced. She was so indifferent towards her kidnapping. Her parents must be quite bewildered by her at the moment.
“That’s what everyone says. They also make that face, like a kicked puppy.”
“I’m sorry.” Dayla just stared at him, her eyes touching his soul as if she understood what Lucas had suffered all these years. It was strange but comforting. He didn’t know when he started crying, much less when the victim comforted the guilty. Minutes passed that felt like hours, with a nurse or two coming in to check on his friend’s wound, as brutally horrific as the first time Lucas saw it in that locker.
“Can I ask something?”
“Sure, why not?”
“Where were you all this time?” Lucas needed to know. It was an insensitive question, one that he didn’t deserve to ask. There was something about that video that made him uncomfortable. When Dayla lied, she had a strange habit of scratching her fingernails. Not many people notice it, but it’s a characteristic of hers.
“I don’t know, somewhere on this planet. How was I supposed to know?”
She lied.